Illinois Poet Laureate Mark Turcotte Brings Experience, Poetry to Knox

Knox College will welcome Illinois Poet Laureate Mark Turcotte for a reading and discussion on Friday on October 9, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. in the Bookfellow Room inside Seymour Library. Turcotte is a Native American poet and the current Illinois Poet Laureate, earning the honor in 2025. He has published two poetry books, Exploding Chippewas and Feathered Heart. 

The event is sponsored by the Department of English’s Caxton Club and the Department of Peace and Justice Studies. Refreshments will be provided and copies of Turcotte’s books will be available for purchase 

Daniel J. Logan Professor of Peace and Justice Leanne Trapedo Sims met Turcotte at an event in Chicago and made the offer to speak at the College. 

“I met Mark Turcotte at a big Illinois Humanities event, and he was the keynote speaker. He did a reading, and I was blown away by his poetry, his passion, his reading style, and the subject of his work that deals with being an Indigenous man,” Trapedo Sims said. 

“The goal of Caxton Club is to bring people from the outside to energize and challenge student assumptions about how they write. I’m excited to have Mark here for those reasons,” Professor of English and Director of the Program in Creative Writing Nicholas Regiacorte added.

Turcotte is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. He spent part of his childhood living on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation and in migrant camps in the western United States. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago. The lecture is not Turcotte’s first experience at Knox. The College impressed Turcotte and helped reunite him with Knox. 

“I found out he was here as part of a music group in the ’90s touring, and he met my predecessor, Philip Sidney Post Professor of English and co-founder of Knox's Program in Creative Writing Robin Metz,” Regiacorte said. “The more we talked, the more I realized how many people we had in common, among Knox alumni and faculty--and how many more would be impacted by his work."

The Knox College Caxton Club is a literary organization that brings high-profile poets, novelists, and essayists to campus every term to read their work in a setting open to all community members. The club is named after the first English printer, William Caxton. Working closely with the English department, Caxton Club is student-run and, after most readings, encourages literary discourse on the Knox campus.

“This is someone who is writing from his lived experience; he doesn’t write poems as a way to puff himself up,” Regiacorte said, “Each poem’s daring feels provoked by necessity.”

Along with his reading, Turcotte will speak with students. Plans are also in the works for him to return in November to do a workshop at Henry Hill Correctional Center with Trapedo Sims’ incarcerated scholar students who are currently reading Exploding Chippewas.

Published on October 05, 2026

Scott Holland, Knox College Office of Communications